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How-To Geek

This week’s edition of WIG is filled with news link coverage on topics such as Microsoft has released an ISO image to repair Windows systems affected by security update 2823324, U.S. Windows computers are among most vulnerable in the world, a former Hostgator employee has been arrested & charged with rooting 2,700 servers, and more.

Weekly News Links

Mozilla parks TowTruck to help browsers collaborateTowTruck is a new Mozilla Labs experiment for collaboration on the web. Implemented entirely in JavaScript, the proof-of-concept service is designed to give real-time chat and voice communications and let two users work together on a web page. You can visit the official TowTruck website here.

Adobe says it will contribute to Google’s BlinkAdobe’s director of engineering for the Web Platform, Vincent Hardy, has confirmed that the company is not taking sides in the WebKit/Blink web rendering engine fork and will be contributing to both WebKit and Blink as they are open source.

Microsoft KB2823324 Update Fix Officially ReleasedMicrosoft broke down lots of Windows 7 computers earlier this month with a buggy Patch Tuesday update that pushed all machines into a continuous reboot loop that, in many cases, ended up with the infamous Blue Screen of Death. They have rolled out a new fix, this time in the form of an ISO image that can be easily burned onto a blank disk and then used to repair your computer.

Microsoft Research adds new functionality to OutlookMost of the focus these days seems to be around Outlook.com, as Microsoft anxiously endeavours to move its apps online and turn software into a service. But Microsoft Research also wants to bring new functionality to the desktop version of Outlook and is announcing the release of Manana Mail to do just that.

Motorola developing Android phones with stock software, ‘just right’ sizeThe dream of a stock Android phone that isn’t too big to use with one hand was almost realized by the HTC First, but we may see some other options on the market in the near future, as well. According to a report from PC Mag, Motorola is working on new smartphones that will run ‘stock’ Android and will be smaller than the giant Android devices that have been dominating the market for the past couple of years.

Outlook.com updates Android appAnother day, another updated app coming from Microsoft. This could get exciting if it keeps up! This time, it’s a newly updated Android app for Outlook.com, an app that Program Manager Steve Kafka admits “has been behind” in his blog post on the Outlook blog detailing the new app.

Yahoo forecasts weather app for iOSMarissa Meyer is bringing big changes to Yahoo and one of them is apparently getting the old search site back into the public focus with new mobile apps. That process began this past week in the world of both Apple and meteorology.

Yahoo tries to freshen up, kills a bunch of productsYahoo is doing some spring cleaning. The company announced its plans this past Friday to shut down several products, including Yahoo Deals, Yahoo SMS Alerts, and the Yahoo Mail and Messenger apps used on feature phones.

US Windows Computers Among the Most Vulnerable in the WorldMicrosoft’s Security Intelligence Report Volume 14 has revealed that Windows computers in the United States are among the most vulnerable in the entire world. It appears that local users do not seem to care much about anti-malware software solutions.

WordPress attack highlights 30 million targetsThe recent botnet attack on websites running WordPress hasn’t had much impact — yet. But with millions of vulnerable sites and a knowledge gap at the low end of the market, things could get much, much worse.

Yes, “design flaw” in 1Password is a problem, just not for end usersThis past week Internet security forums have buzzed with news about a newly discovered technique that allows crackers to make an impressive 3 million guesses per second when trying to find the passcode that unlocks the contents of the widely used 1Password password manager.

Attackers gain access to Linode customer dataHosting company Linode has published details on an attack on their servers that saw unknown hackers penetrate the company’s network and access customer information including credit card data.

Old tricks are new again: Dangerous copy & pasteCopying and pasting something does not necessarily mean the user will get what they think they are getting. With a little bit of HTML magic, one can even trick unwitting web site visitors into executing shell commands without their knowledge.

Fueled by super botnets, DDoS attacks grow meaner and ever-more powerfulCoordinated attacks used to knock websites offline grew meaner and more powerful in the past three months, with an eight-fold increase in the average amount of junk traffic used to take sites down, according to a company that helps customers weather the so-called distributed denial-of-service campaigns.

Lost+Found: Android memories and real-time cuckoosToo small for news, but too good to lose, Lost+Found is a compilation of the other stories that have been on The H’s radar over the last seven days: Android memory dump analysis, OCSP performance, 1Password security, Python crypto cracking, real-time cuckoo, Hack In The Box slides, Certificate Pinning, and the reason Linode was hacked.

Apple remembers where you wanted to get drunk for up to 2 yearsRemember that time when you asked Siri about the nearest place to find hookers? Or perhaps the time you wanted to know where to find the best burritos at 3am? Whatever you’ve been asking Siri since its launch in late 2011 is likely still on record with Apple, as revealed by a report by Wired this past Friday.

Set a Sound Alarm to Warn When Your Battery is LowYou can set Windows 7 and Windows 8 to play an annoying alarm when your battery is critically low, but it does help to have an audio reminder so that you don’t forget to plug in your laptop or tablet.